02.08.10
Круто!
Спасибо огромное!
02.07.10
Film Group Session
Hello! Two members of the film group, Kanchana and Hannah met today to work through our first film group project for the Staff-Student Conference in April. We have had great fun going through previous clips taken by former film group members. We have been inspired and enlightened to create what will hopefully be a successful film highlighting the “legend of CILASS.”
Considering we are beginners we have taken the opportunity to develop new IT skills though Windows media player and Windows movie maker. This has allowed us to be more creative and explore different aspects of making films.
It has dawned on us that though this is our first film it is likely it is also our last for CILASS. We hope this film will help teach others the importance of CILASS and how it can affect the way we learn and engage with our subject.
As SAN members we have come to realise taking this project is in itself IBL and we are devleoping transferable skills through hands on experience through different softwares and equipment available to us. We will endeavour to let you know our progress thoughout the film’s production over the coming weeks. We realise this film project is a challenge, so fingers crossed that we can get it done in time…
01.05.10
Three go to Newport
Back in December, a CILASS Fellow delegation went to the Society for Research in Higher Education conference in Newport. This consisted of Clare Rishbeth, Sheila Webber, and myself, and before giving our own three-paper symposium on the final day, we attended as many of the other papers and panels as possible. There was an awful lot going on, so below you’ll find our partial reflections of the conference; and Sheffield folk might want to read them along with Luke Desforges’ reflections, as he picked up a different but overlapping series of themes.
Three big ideas that we noticed were:
1. The importance of communities, especially for innovators in learning and teaching; these communities might be real or virtual, within the institution or beyond, but having other people to rely on when doing something a bit different really seemed critical for bringing about change. This is, perhaps, a pertinent point to make in relation to CILASS at this particular historical moment. There was a generous amount of critique of academic identities (nothing more interesting than your own life!)… the interesting points to us were where this overlapped with other (i.e. professional) identities and roles. There still seemed to me an emphasis on the academic as primarily teacher / research which potentially marginalises some FE and post 1992 roles. Even in ‘trad’ unis the new research funding / grading emphasis of knowledge transfer / impact and the need for academic staff with strong links to other sectors of employment suggests that we need to look at connectivity between academic / non academic in terms of building communities.
2. There were a number of representatives of CETLs present, many of which reporting impressive work - one that seemed interesting was based in Oxford Brookes, and explored issues around assessment: http://www.brookes.ac.uk/aske/. It was tricky to determine what was happening with this or other CETLs next year, but it was good to see the hundred flowers blooming from the whole CETL project.
3. There are clearly difficult times ahead for the HE sector, and a need was felt to contribute to the policy agenda, although a clear sense didn’t emerge from the conference about how to do this.
At its best, the conference offered serious, considered, and well-informed explorations of critical issues in contemporary HE. The main things most of us took away were pragmatic and practice-focused, but as Sheila suggested in the closing debate, there had been richness in methodological matters as well, and these could offer further opportunities for developing practices in the sector. For example, one presentation reflected on the use of appreciative enquiry as an alternative to problem based learning in teaching occupational therapy. This has stimulated Sheila into thinking how this approach might be incorporated into her own teaching practice.
However, we felt that there was a need for the occasional stepping back, giving the ‘so what’ and wider picture around individual practices. Clearly this can often be the case with conference organisation, but it was a shame that there was not more chance to make connections between discussions of practice on the local scale and broader issues of policy and pedagogic directions.
Our own symposium went well, thank you for asking, and we had a good in-depth discussion about the ways CILASS has supported our learning and teaching. More details on this are available from any of us; and if anyone would like more detailed notes or a look at individual papers, please get in touch. Sheila has put her short paper online at http://tinyurl.com/ycblhgc.
06.09.09
The Difference that Inquiry Makes
I don’t think this has been blogged already … a collection of essays in the online journal Academic Commons (Jan 2009 issue) called The Difference that Inquiry Makes: A Collaborative Case Study on Technology and Learning, from the Visible Knowledge Project. The essays were posted between January and March 2009. “This collection of essays from the Visible Knowledge Project is edited by Randy Bass and Bret Eynon, who served together as the Project’s Co-Directors and Principal Investigators. The Visible Knowledge Project was a collaborative scholarship of teaching and learning project exploring the impact of technology on learning, primarily in the humanities [in the USA]” The emphasis is on use of technology and multimedia, but with an inquiring approach to learning and teaching, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. http://www.academiccommons.org/issue/case-studies-vkp
06.02.09
The BILETA Conference
I went to the 2009 conference of the British & Irish Law, Technology and Education conference in Winchester, for CILASS. Winchester is a historic town with a great chocolate shop, so a good start. I was all prepared for papers on the educational use of technology, but the legal dimension adds something special. We need to know a surprising amount about online privacy, intellectual property, data protection and the consequences of the virtual worlds out there.
As educational technologies, Second Life and Twitter proved a bit disappointing. Glasgow Caledonian University has created a virtual campus, but students seeking interviewees in Second Life had problems finding enough people to talk to. Twitter has very short messages, which limits information dissemination. Clicker technology seemed rather more promising. Students can be asked to respond to questions or to vote during lectures. An MMU study reviewed its uses. It can particularly break up long periods of talking, but that there was inertia in university faculties limiting its use.
Cumbria university is using Pebblepad software to create some very interactive PDP environments for students. This seemed to work well with 13 students but the more than 1,000 strong law school at Sheffield might be a bit more of a challenge. Another study of Podcasts and other portable technologies suggested that students do not actually use these on the move, but rather listen or watch at their computers.
There were questions I had not thought of asking. Why are so many technological devices called after fruit? Blackberry, Orange, Apple – Jeremy Phillips thought this was an intellectual property ploy, which handily labelled a variety of technologies all converging in a single device, such as the I-phone. Another speaker, Heidi Schuster from Germany, caused a collective worry in the audience, when she suggested that it might breach data protection law to use G-mail for employment purposes. For when things go wrong, Richard Clayton thought internet regulation was too complicated and too specific. You wouldn’t have a special law for dishwashers, and some existing generic crime legislation might work well. There were more esoteric papers such as how to train students in legal argumentation by software producing diagrams, and how to generate a “must-read” list using Google links. All of the papers will be online at http://www.bileta.ac.uk/pages/Conference%20Papers.aspx in a little while. This conference is recommended for the speediest of updates in these areas and more.
05.20.09
Hearing the Student Voice conference
Last Thursday, Natalie, Su and I went over to Leeds Metropolitan University to a conference organised as part of an ESCalate-funded project. The project is all about ‘Hearing the Student Voice’, and this particular conference was concerned with involving students in curriculum design. Charged with the brief of facilitating a one-hour workshop on the student ambassador network and how this might translate to other context, it was rather fitting that our little team included both the outgoing student-co-ordinator (Natalie), and the incoming one (Su). we started our session by inviting delegates to think about the terms ’student engagement’, ’student voice’, ’student partnership’, etc., and to try and map these terms onto Roger Hart’s Ladder of Young People’s Participation. The ladder was developed in the school context, but certainly has mirroring aspects in HE. Following on from this, we gave a brief talk about the SAN, before going into discussions regarding other people’s contexts. Money and time is an ever-recurring theme when it comes to staff-student partnerships in HE, new developments grow on the back of individuals’ enthusiasm, but if they are not sustained, they depend on individuals to succeed, and atrophy without them. Delegates commented on the enthusiasm and skills of the SAN, and the network had another request for a ‘consultation visit’ to another institution to discuss their work.
But our session wasn’t the only one - of particular interest was a ‘rolling speed-dating’ session, 10 minute slots where participants received a taster of a project or initiative, together with handouts and contact details. It was a whirlwind 45 minutes, particularly sticking in mind was Jenny Eland from Birmingham University, who allows her students not only to determine their own assessment, but to do this at individual level - i.e. potentially as many different methods as there are students in the class. Definitely inspiring!
05.07.09
IBL Cafe on student involvement in learning and teaching
Yesterday’s IBL Cafe was led by the student ambassadors, giving an overview of their involvement in learning and teaching, and a discussion around opportunities and barriers. As usual, simply the sharing of experiences was appreciated - no matter how many times we bring staff and students together, it seems the benefits of this are undiminished, there is always something new for both sides to discover and engage in. Departmental practice differs - in some departments students are becoming involved in a different kind of module evaluation, moving away from forms and towards a more communicative evaluation approach. Overall, the demands on the SAN Evaluation Group continue to grow, and we discussed the gap this will leave post-CILASS.
In other departments, discussions take place earlier, with students feeding into module design ideas - we discussed the issues this holds for vocational degrees, where external bodies specify ‘what’ is learnt - maybe here, student involvement means to help decide ‘how’ the content is learnt, working together with staff on learning and teaching approaches.
Thank you to everybody who attended. This was the last IBL Cafe of the year, but we’re hoping to continue the tradition next year - any ideas for topics, please let us know!
03.25.09
3rd CILASS Staff Student Conference on IBL
Friday 20th march saw the 3rd iteration of the very successful CILASS Staff-Student Conference on IBL take place in the CILASS space in the Information Commons. The Student Ambassador Network chose the theme of ‘Inquire, Engage, Challenge and Change’ for the conference and for the first time contributions were invited from staff and students external to the University as well as the community here. The conference featured a variety of session formats from presentations about IBL projects and activities, to Inquiry-based workshops and hosted converstaions. There were plenty of opportunities for conference delegates to feedback about their experiences and contribute to the bridge the SAN were creating between staff and students. There are plenty of photos from the event on Flickr
The first session I went to was an interactive workshop hosted by students from the Performing Arts programme at York St John University who had taken part in an inquiry-based project to investigate contemporary African dance through interviewing visiting dancers/coreographers. It was fascinating hearing about their experiences, and the audience even had the opportunity to try out some African dance moves ourselves which was an unexpected but stimulating start to the day.
After the coffee break I went to a workshop led by students from the Japanese department here at the University of Sheffield. Participants were invited to take an inquiry-based approach to deciphering some rather obscure Japanese idioms, while reflecting on the key role correct use of idioms play in achieving fluency in a second language. Following a superb lunch I attended a workshop run by some members of the SAN themselves. This was a workshop that had been ran for students in two other institutions regarding IBL and employability. We were asked to consider an actual graduate trainee application forms and how we could complete it using examples from the IBL we had taken part in. It quickly becamse apparent how useful IBL is for creating situations where students can gain experience in situations such as conflict resolution, time management, teamwork and initiative that are necessary to stand out as a good candidate for graduate employers. The presenters left with several invites from academic staff to run the workshop again for students in various departments so i was clearly not the only one who was impressed with their workshop.
It was really great to see students confidently leading workshops for staff.
03.16.09
Working together: staff-student collaboration, five years in the future
This post is a brief report from a meeting of the CILASS student ambassador network and academic champions, discussing the future of staff-student collaboration. A full report of the meeting is available here, and I’ll try to sketch out some of the main points below. The meeting took place back on the 20th February, but rather than apologise for the extreme tardiness of this post, I will instead take the opportunity to plug the CILASS staff-student conference, on Friday 20th March. This will also explore issues around staff-student collaboration, so like the man who stayed up all night, instead of being out very late, I am rather up very early.
The framework for the meeting was asking staff and students to generate stories, imagining what staff-student collaboration at Sheffield might be like in five years’ time. The purpose behind this fictional frame was to allow creative licence, while simultaneously focusing on immediate actions – what can we do now to create this imagined future? Both stories highlighted significant aspects of collaboration, which were then developed in general conversation. A heavy emphasis was placed on the everyday foundations required for successful staff-student collaboration – there need to be good relations between individuals and groups before you could do anything else, and this required time, space, and opportunities to get to know one another. These everyday foundations may well mesh in the future with much more flexibility in modes of learning – conversations could spill over from the seminar room to the coffee shop, and through enhanced provision of online information and the development of mobile technologies, it could be equally information-rich in both. Finally, a word that carried a lot of weight in the meeting was community: ways of being with one another that represented, respected, and furthered common interests. The term stretches from every level, between a group of students and the entire University, and encompasses a massive range of kinds of interaction. We are all engaged in community-building activities all of the time; the question in an academic context becomes how these might be best nurtured to support learning on all sides.
The meeting was very productive and helpful in thinking through some of these issues, and for creating a space where staff and students could enact some of that mutual support and collaboration. This kind of discussion will doubtless be continued at the staff-student conference, and in my opinion, will be central to the development of learning in higher education over the next few years. In practical terms, the task will be to keep this on the agenda, and keep experimenting with and developing forms of collaborative activity. My thanks to all those who took part in this phase of the conversation, and I look forward to continuing to work together.
03.05.09
3rd Enquiry-based Learning Symposium at York St John
Yesterday, four student ambassadors and I went across to York, kindly invited to contribute to York St John University’s 3rd Annual Enquiry Based Learning (EBL) Symposium. The theme “Students as Researchers: Student Stories or Tales of the Unexpected” followed on from the previous two years, the first of which had been focused on staff, and the second on staff-student partnerships. Our student ambassadors were responsible for two sessions and half the keynote, and I’m sure they’ll be blogging their own experiences on the student blog, so I’ll just focus on my impressions from the day.
The symposium made brilliant use of the creativity of university’s students, and the university is, of course, home to the ‘Collaborating for Creativity’ CETL. As a result, the day started off with an interpretive dance, mixing several dance forms and illustrating beautifully that the day was about learning from each other. In the main, the day was an opportunity for students who had been recipients of their undergraduate research bursaries to share the fruits of their labour - as we have only just launched our own SURE (Sheffield Undergraduate Research Scheme), it was great to see what the students had achieved over last summer, and is promising great things from our own students when they get the same opportunity. Seeing staff and students collaborate as researchers, and being given the opportunity to hear both points of view illustrated the challenges of each side touching the ‘other’s’ world, and finding common ground and language as a basis for collaborative research.
Several discussions stuck out from the day - whether a conflation of IBL and research was helpful, or indeed the intention, and that ‘research’ in the traditional academic sense might only form part of the term ‘inquiry’.
Some students from York St John will be reciprocating our visit, and will be presenting at our upcoming Staff-student conference on the 20th of March - a month for staff-student partnerships!